Aeroplanes, aircraft, things that fly

Stumbleupon is an awesome time waster but every now and then it throws up a gem.

The national Museum of the US Air Force has a virtual tour that is one of the best I have ever seen.

http://www.nmusafvirtualtour.com

If you like you aircraft this is as close as you are going to get to being there. a really well made virtual tour of the museum. My favourite cold war super plane is there - the SR-71 Blackbird.

To back it up they also have a range of resources for teachers -
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/education/educators/index.asp

and a range of fact sheets for every aircraft there.

Time, clocks and calenders

A friend of mine wanted to set up a calendar to print out for a couple of months - she is old school. To help I had a look around and in the process found a couple of online calendar generators.

But this one was the best - Time and date -

Not only did it have a very useful calendar maker but also a range of tools that are really useful for teaching students about time. With timers, countdowns, world clocks and time zone maps there is enough there to cover some great concepts right from you IWB.

Spiceworks - Free software for School system Admins

I've been a System admin for both a school and a business with over 50 networked devices - managing them all has been a real pain and I have used a range of tools to get jobs done.

I was stumbling along last night and came across Spiceworks - it is a network discovery reporting and management system that is free (paid for through vendor advertising). It does everything my multitude of tools used to do and more.

It does a lot - see below. And is fairly easy to use. I have asked around and a couple of schools over here are using it to manage all their devices - particularly printers and switches.

Inventory Your Network
Network Inventory
IT Asset Management
IT Audit Software
Warranty Tracking
Virtualization Management
Monitor Your Network
Network Monitoring
Green IT Software
SNMP Network Management
SQL Server Monitoring
Cloud Computing Management
UPS Power Management Software
Run an IT Help Desk
Help Desk Software
Hosted Email Support
Active Directory Management
IT Purchasing Management
Help Desk iPhone App
Help Desk Android App
Manage Configuration Changes
TFTP Server
Change Management
Map Your Network
Network Mapping
Troubleshoot Network Problems
Network Troubleshooting

Free Marine Waters Resources

The WA government with the help of business has developed a fantastic marine resource for teachers.

From the front page:

Marine WATERs is an inter­ac­tive and fully inte­grated resource that con­nects edu­ca­tors and stu­dents with resources and tools devel­oped specif­i­cally to study West­ern Australia’s unique marine ecosys­tems and address chal­lenges fac­ing the sus­tain­abil­ity of our aquatic resources.

This ever-expanding suite of curriculum-based edu­ca­tion resources includes les­son plans, inter­ac­tive activ­i­ties, exten­sion activ­i­ties, stu­dent work­sheets, fact sheets, and infor­ma­tion on cur­rent and emerg­ing issues.

To get your hands on the resources you have to register but after that the resources are free to use.

http://marinewaters.fish.wa.gov.au/

Free MindMapping Plus

In my list of must have applications is Freemind - an open source mind mapping or concept mapping program. It does a good job but as with the nature of open source a couple of people thought they could improve on it - So here are two derivitives of the original.


FreePlane 
Freeplane is free and open source software to support thinking, sharing information and getting things done at work, in school and at home. The core of the software consists of functions for mind mapping, also called concept mapping or information mapping, and tools for using mapped information. Freeplane runs on any operating system on which a current version of Java is installed and from USB.


SciPlore Mind Mapping 
SciPlore MindMapping is the first mind mapping tool focusing on researchers’ needs by integrating mind mapping with reference and pdf management. SciPlore MindMapping offers all the features one would expect from a standard mind mapping software, plus special features for researchers.


Have a look at the video and you will see how useful this is to high school students and those at university level.

More free art - Google Art Project

It is absolutely amazing what happens when you narrow down your stumble-upon interests - I had no idea this existed until it popped up on a recent stumble.

Imaging street view and Google earth mashed up with Art from around the world from amazing galleries - and you would have the Google Art Project -

Holy cow - you can get really close to some amazing art - and I mean really close.

Go - get going I'll see you in a couple of hours.

Climate Change in Western Australia

It is no secret that climate change is happening - and it is especially noticeable where I live. We have been under water restrictions for about ten years now in one form or another - mostly sprinkler bans and the like, plus lots of TV advertising encouraging us to take shorter showers, install rainwater tanks and save as much water as possible.

For students (an adults) it may be a bit hard for them to understand why this is all taking place, and while the science of climate change is complicated there is no doubt from the weight of evidence that we are to blame for much of it, and compounding other natural forces.

There are two places to get really good visual data on this change in climate and how it effects our water supply and way of life here in Perth.

The WA Water Corporation has a great website that has some great resources for showing what has happened over the last 100years, and what we can do about it. It also runs a water wise school program and incursion program.

The Bureau of Meteorology has one of those websites that looks boring but has a massive amount of information that is really easy to access.

They also have real-time radar and satellite maps so if there is a cold front coming over you can track it as it dumps rain.

The climate maps for rainfall, temperature and vegetation all have archives that allow you to compare year to year changes in colour coded maps.